Mary Riddell is a columnist and a political interviewer for the Daily Telegraph. She writes on topics ranging from family to foreign policy and is particularly interested in criminal justice. Her focus is what is going on, for better or for worse, in the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Labour and the Lib Dems need each other more than ever

The AV referendum result was always going to be bad for the Yes camp. It is shaping up to be a disaster, with early results showing around 70 per cent for the No vote. If that balance stands, then the chance of electoral reform may well be gone for a generation.

Nick Clegg will have much cause to reproach himself. The timing of the referendum was poor, and the Yes lobby conducted a feeble campaign for a feeble change. But Mr Clegg should not berate himself too much, if only because Ed Miliband will do it for him.

Already Labour are complaining that Clegg blew it. If only he had insisted on an earlier vote, when the whiff of Cleggmania still lingered and the Coalition was in its infancy. Failing that, he should have waited for two years at least. Well, maybe. But this referendum was Labour's to win or lose, and Mr Miliband could not rally his party behind him.

This is a bad day for the centre Left. Mr Miliband should accept Labour's share of the blame for failing to bring home a (slightly) fairer voting system and use this humiliation to strike an accord with Mr Clegg. The message of today is that Labour and the Lib Dems are going to need one another more than ever.